


Liminal Moments

by OliviaZircon



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 10:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OliviaZircon/pseuds/OliviaZircon
Summary: A collection of short fics written based on prompts from folx in the fandom





	1. Paint It Black

“You’re sure it will wash out?”

“What? No! That’s the point honey, he’ll be stuck with it!”

“Oh…Oh yeah! Alright this is better.” 

Hella stands up over the log with her hands on her hips and looks at Hadrian’s garments spread out. The spring is bubbling up around the corner and she can hear the rhythm of his arms breaking the water. Only he would get in a hot spring and then promptly swim laps.

Adaire tucks back a loose strand of hair that escaped her braid, and tugs on Hella’s wrist to pull her back down behind cover. Hella’s crouch is silent despite the snow beneath them and Adaire takes the chance to look her girlfriend up and down and marvel at the fact that she’s sleeveless even in the dead of winter. 

Hella turns over the paladin’s breeches in her hands, pulling out the drawstring and pocketing it. She reaches out to hold Adaire’s hand and thinks better on seeing it, putting her fingertips on Adaire’s knuckles instead.

Adaire flips her hand over quicker than Hella can even see, and grabs Hella’s fingers, turning her head to give a vulpine grin. 

“Got you!” she laughs before letting go, leaving Hella’s fingers stained black as night. 

“You’re going to be helping anyways so it’s not like your hand was going to stay clean.”

Hella shrugs after thinking on it for a second.  
“Yeah I suppose not, but-” Hella’s hand darts up to to playfully slap at Adaire’s cheek. “You’ve got some on your face babe!” 

Both women reach down into the bowl of ink and dart at each other’s faces. A moment later each of them has caught one wrist of the other. Hella is still kneeling to remain unseen, so in a rare reversal, Adaire is standing over her. They both take a couple slow breaths, and Adaire slowly leans down.

Hella sees a drop of the ink on Adaire’s lip and darts out her tongue to lick it clean before considering the taste. Her eyes widen in surprise and she looks up at Adaire. 

“...Wait babe where did you get squid ink?” Hella asks, bemused. “I thought we were using your work ink for this.”

 

Adaire’s eyebrows furrow in consternation “What? You thought I would use up my Kickshaw ink for a prank?”

Hella shrugs.  
“Well, I thought it was a bit wasteful, but I hadn’t exactly thought you had time when we were in Rosemerrow to go down to The Long Sand and go fishing. We were a bit busy with the murders y’know?”

In response Adaire dips her mouth down to Hella’s again, and twists her right wrist deftly to break out of Hella’s hold and moves to hold both of the fighter’s wrists up and away from both of them. Hella opens her mouth a bit wider and closes her eyes, leaning into the kiss. A loud splash sounds from around the corner and both women freeze with their eyes open wide. 

Adaire releases Hella and they both soak their hands in the ink, rummaging through Hadrian’s vestments to leave black handprints all over his gear. There isn’t enough time to dye his full set of undergarments Ordenna black anymore.

Adaire grins up at Hella as they finish work on his shirt and flips the bowl upside down over the wolf’s fur cloak that Hadrian wears now. Hella’s eyes widen and she tries to stop her girlfriend but it’s too late.

Both women stare in amazement as the ink slicks off without staining the wolf’s fur at all. It’s in this moment that Hadrian strolls amiably around the corner, completely naked. Both women flush and look away but neither of them think to lower their hands from the bowl of ink turned upside down over the cloak.

“What.. What in the grace of the sun’s reach are you two doing?” Hadrian shouts and raises his hands over his head as if to throw something. A sudden gust picks up, though, and he quickly thinks better and lowers his hands, realizing how naked he is in a field of snow under the light of only one moon. With his hands joined to cover himself he glares at the pair of women.

“Look, to be honest Hadrian, this was going to be a lot better when we were going to dye it fully black,” Hella offers with a shrug, letting go of the bowl.

”Y’know, like Ordenna?” she adds lamely. Hella is steadfastly looking at the sky at this point and covering her mouth with ink-stained fingers to hide her amusement.

Hadrian flushes dark and raises one hand to point square between the mischief makers at the lounging Golden Lance and dep-cutie resting on a snow bank .

“And why didn’t you do anything to stop them? Even you, Kodiak?”

The laughter of the rest of the party carries into the trees.


	2. Less Than

Hadrian only feels the snow along the edges of his cracked arm. There is a sort of numbness that almost buzzes like a bee in spots where the snow has caked on and gotten between the pieces of his left elbow. 

His feet drive holes in the snow of the Mark, and every few steps his right knee bends out at a bit of an angle as he comes down on a rock wrong. It is only ever the right leg that cannot adjust to uneven footing; the left seems to crush aberrations out into the dirt beneath the snow. Tabbard says that in time the right leg will follow suit, instruments of purpose that rewrite the world where it falls in the path of their squadron.

“This hill is the last! Now we stop to pray for the way to be made smooth before we leave,” calls out Tabbard from the front. Hadrian knows that the message is only for his benefit. The rest of their company are all identical and would have stopped at Tabbard’s raised fist alone, but Hadrian is another true servant of their King, another soldier by choice.

When Hadrian stops, the others do. When he kneels they kneel. And Hadrian knows the time has come. He offers a prayer to the Boy King, and draws his golden sword that was as blessed as The Author’s Quill. 

Hadrian takes three long steps and plunges the blade through the back of Tabbard’s neck, shattering the man into a cloud of white dust that mixes into the snow, inseparable.

From here on out, Hadrian will be the leader of the Pala-din, the first and greatest of them, and he will lead their force back to Samot’s rightful seat of power, The City of First Light. There he will drive out the cult that his King tells him worships a cursed Sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic is named after the new Nine Inch Nails song Less Than from the new EP Add Violence. Give it a listen, it's pretty great.
> 
> This fic was written off the prompt from @hierocrat "Hadrian being a Pala-din" and I uh... ran with that more than I thought I would.
> 
> Thanks to @Yellow for betaing on this one.


	3. Haunting Haunted Haunts

My hands take the brunt of my weight as I push up from the solitary oak table at the back of The Laughing Buck. I dip my head as I stand to duck under the ceiling beam and wave to Mariposa at the bar on my way out. She trusts me to leave my coin at my table by now, and she knows I don’t like to be bothered when I’m drinking. Before I walk out the door I walk over to the end of the bar and pocket my nightly cut of raw beef. We’ll come back to that later, promise.

I grab my robe from a hook by the door and pull on the left sleeve, pushing the door open with my palm through the rough fabric. By the time I make it out into the night my arm is through and I’m flailing to find the right armhole. I’m still a bit unsteady from the fistful of ale I had, and I guess the shot of whisky I pounded down when I first arrived didn’t help. With both of my arms in the black sleeves of my robe, I duck into an alley and cast Prestidigitation over my head to pull my white hood with eyeholes out of the ether. I stop with my feet shoulder-width apart and reach out with both hands over my head to summon my staff in a flurry of snow from the cloudless sky. 

The night is here, it’s time to move.

I make my way down into the Sun District and keep an ear out for any disturbances. It’s been half an hour and my head is starting to clear away from the fuzz of the drinks. That’s good, this work takes attention and a mistake could cost me an arm or worse. I rub at the mottled skin of my left arm under my sleeve, and as I step over a fallen granite pillar I roll up the linen on my arm to take a look at how it’s healing. My dark skin is bubbled up in places and has swirls that are a light pink color -- it looked a lot worse last night when I got it.Parts of my arm had looked like they would peel off.

I guess I’m learning to be more careful throwing around fire.

I stop as I near the end of a street, and pull the piece of meat from my pocket. I hold it in my right palm up over my head and slowly move my arm around in a circle, preparing a fireball in the astral plane. I center it on the ruined building that looks like it was once a small palace. It only takes a minute for my quarry to come scrabbling out from behind the wooden desk inside. Its long white arms and legs are the same length, with knife-sharp talons made for tearing into meat. An elongated snout practically swings from side to side as it escalates from a lope to a canter, paying no attention to the wizard beneath its solitary goal. Venomous drool flies from the poorly fitting teeth of its slavering jaws as it kicks off from the ground in a sailing arc towards the meat in my hand.

I hate ghouls.

I drop to my knees and cry out a scream of fury -- that’s what fuels fire after all -- and the ghoul is engulfed along with its meal. I throw myself backwards and take the base of my staff in both hands, swinging it up into the ghoul’s side. The ice magic that binds my staff to this plane makes contact with the flames broiling over the ghoul and explodes, throwing the ghoul into a nearby wall. It lands with a whump of fire extinguishing and a sickening thud.

I climb up shakily, thankfully free of any burns tonight. With my hands around my staff I look up to see that I’m not alone on the street. The captain of the city guard is there and he’s glaring at me.

“I thought I told you to stay out of fights. I told you that the guard can handle any beasts that come out of the Sun District to actually hurt the citizens of Velas.” His cedar eyes are narrowed in fury and his hand is on the golden pommel of his holy blade. I look up its mottled purple and black length to the gauntleted hand that holds it. Not many people in the city go against the words of The Paladin, let alone a direct order. Hadrian has held this city in his fist for over a decade, ever since singlehandedly leading the resistance against the Ordennan invasion.

“You would let these monsters live here, stalk the weak, and pick them off.” I stand up to my full height, the white cowl of my robe glowing softly in rhythm with a pulsing light from my staff. I’m half a foot taller than him and the street is bathed in the light of my power. He may be blessed, but I know my grasp of the arcane arts far outclasses his boons as guardian of Velas.

Still, I know it isn’t the time to take my place as the sole guardian of the city. As if reading my mind, Hadrian draws his blade and levels it at me from across the street.

“Leave. Tonight. I command you as the Sword of Samothes, Defender of the Dark Son, Captain of the Order of Eternal Princes, Patriarch of Velas. Leave Velas and do not return under penalty of death and excommunication. You have defied me for too long.” I can feel heat rolling off him as he invokes his power. I could fight the compulsion behind the spell, but then againI have a lead on a golden city to the east where a golden god rules that I’ve been meaning to investigate anyways.

Besides, this isn’t the first time my father has kicked me out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I went off-piste on this one, the prompt was from @placentalmammal suggesting that I do Benjamin in his bubble world, and instead I wrote an AU where being in the bubble had a profound effect on him.
> 
> Song for this fic is Haunting Haunted Haunts by Against Me! off their album Shape Shift With Me. 
> 
> Thanks to @Yellow for betaing on this one!


	4. Belt Loops

Hadrian looks up nervously as the bell at the door of the shop rings. Throndir seems to glide into the shop, and Hadrian is finally certain that something has been different the last few days. The elf is paler than Hadrian has ever seen him, and even being the Ranger, Throndir has a new surety to his step as his moves through the city.

The girl at the counter seems to be caught up in Throndir’s gait. She comes over to them just as Throndir makes it to Hadrian. She seems cute but Hadrian is too busy noticing that Throndir’s pupils look like deep glacier pools with no bottom. He meets Hadrian’s gaze, eyes [dark and deep] with no end.

“Can I help you two find anything?” the girl asks, and Hadrian winces at the way she refers to them as a pair. He’s still uncertain about all of this but coming here had sounded like such a good idea when Throndir suggested it over drinks the night before. The last time Hadrian was in this kind of store was with Rosana a few years ago when a traveling merchant had set up shop in a corner of the Sun District during the Festival of High Sun.

Rosana, Hadrian’s mind repeated with a trace of guilt. She would be here soon. He had sent for her and Benjamin, but…well, she had told him to keep an eye out for anyone “fun” and Hadrian had seen her sizing up Throndir months ago, right after the storm hit. Hadrian just can’t figure out why he is taking action now.

And then Throndir’s hand is on his and his mind whites out like a city under a wave of snow. The girl takes one look at the two of them, taking in their adventuring garb and weapons, and considering the lack of answer, she scurries back behind the counter. She steadfastly watches the door to greet any new customers and divert them away from the pair of extremely intense men. Hadrian catches none of this because at this point his eyes are on Throndir’s mouth.

He could swear he sees a flash in Throndir’s grin at his state. That’s new.

Throndir presses his lips to Hadrian’s ear and asks softly, “So which of these collars do you think you’d like to try?” Hadrian does not realize it but his hand goes to the hilt of his sword, trembling because he is so used to reaching for it when he is anxious. Throndir notices and deftly catches Hadrian’s hand in his, lacing his fingers through Hadrian’s.

“You should wait to grab your sword until we get back to the apartment,” Throndir admonishes, and Hadrian flushes a dark shade in embarrassment at the realization he’d been so badly caught off guard that he had gone for his sword. And then he shudders as he catches the obvious implication of what his companion had said. With a shaking hand, Hadrian reaches out to grab a red leather collar with a couple studs worked into it and looks Throndir in the eyes.

“I think this one would,” he says, and breaks off. “I’d like wearing this one tonight,” Hadrian says, looking down to try to hide the heat in his cheeks. 

A quick finger catches his chin and Throndir meets his gaze, grinning wide -- there, something about his teeth! -- and the Ranger takes the collar and walks briskly to the girl at the counter, his gold already out of his pouch and clinking onto the countertop from a few feet away.

It doesn’t take the two of them long at all to make it back to their apartment in Roseheart and put their new purchase to good use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was based off a prompt by @jackaljag "Hadrian and Throndir having a Good Time"
> 
> Fic is titled after the song Belt Loops by The Films, check it out it's very fun and about jealousy
> 
> I might come back to this prompt because I have another scene in mind later in the same night :eyes: 
> 
> Thanks to @Yellow for betaing this one!

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 1 was from @mercutioes "Hella and Adaire being gay and pranking Hadrian" according to my notes.
> 
> The fic is titled Paint It Black after the song by the Rolling Stones, entirely because sometimes I like to be literal for the fun of it
> 
> Thanks to @Yellow for betaing this one!


End file.
